Visions for the Future: How free-trade agreements benefit ordinary people

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Integration comes in many shapes and forms. Virtual free-trade zones, as we've just heard. We know how bilateral agreements have aided the growth and development of their respective partners, but another way which really benefits ordinary people are multi-lateral free-trade agreements. CGTN's Yang Zhao explains.

YANG ZHAO "What does a Free Trade Agreement mean to you? Free Trade Agreement, or FTA, may sound abstract to you, but when it comes to food, the Free Trade Agreement really changes how you eat."

If you are a foodie, Free Trade Agreement is good news for you. Under the agreement, your country will be opened for other markets, which give you more choices on the table. For dinner, you could have wine from Chile, salmon from Iceland, and mango from Thailand. And you could have a lot of them all year round.

Sometimes you might feel foreign goods are more expensive than those produced in your country. That is because they are slapped with tax after entering your country.

Free Trade Agreement can gradually reduce and even eliminate the tax on those foreign products. So you can buy them cheaper. And without the Free Trade Agreement, foreign goods have to wait in line to be scanned. For instance, if you want to taste a box of Australian milk, after weeks of waiting, the date might expire when it finally shows up at your doorstep.

The FTA is aimed to avoid that scenario. It will either cut some of the steps to make the line shorter, or give that box of milk a green card. Thus you can enjoy it when it is still fresh.

Now let's look at some of multilateral Free Trade Agreement in Asia. There is a smaller one with just three countries involved. But the negotiation on this one was long and tough. There is also a bigger one that the negotiations were completed! 98% of goods in the region will be duty free! And what might be the biggest one? RCEP.

YANG ZHAO "This one covers nearly half of the world population. If everything goes well, it will be signed as early as this year."